


in the stillness

by godless



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 14:14:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29154888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/godless/pseuds/godless
Summary: The pulse beneath the soft skin of her wrist feels like sedative to him. She is alive, more than he is, and he clings to her breath, her scent, her voice, consumes it all in, greedy and feverish.It is the end of the war. Or the beginning of a new one.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Comments: 15
Kudos: 77





	in the stillness

**Day 0: Hour 18**

Alliser Thorne grins at him, all of his rotting black teeth on display before stabbing him in the stomach.  _ For the Watch.  _ Bowen Marsh.  _ For the Watch.  _ Othell Yarwyck.  _ For the Watch. _ There are several others, names of which he could not recount as blood rushes up to his throat. Olly.  _ For the Watch.  _ This time the knife slides smoothly through his chest and straight to his heart. 

Death is empty and cold **.** He worships his father’s old gods, but he has danced with the Stranger and slipped past it numerous times that it must have rejoiced to finally greet him, its touch a searing black. The betrayal of his brothers cut deeper than the knives they dug through him, and the void of death welcomes him, slowly, gently, like an old friend. Images of his family slip through his eyes. Robb, snowflakes on his hair.  _ Kill the boy and let the man be born. _ Bran, climbing up a wall tower, agile as a monkey. Rickon’s breathless laughter. Sansa, brushing out Lady’s coat and singing softly to herself.  _ You know nothing, Jon Snow. _ Arya, her hair as tangled as a bird’s nest. He will never see them again. 

_ Ghost. _

It is snowing. 

  
  


**Day 1: Hour 17**

Jon wakes up with a gasp, chest heaving and desperate for air. It takes him a moment to register his surroundings — the Lord Commander’s chambers. He is naked, and cold, and he exhales in relief when he sees Ghost’s form rushing up toward him, tail wagging, until he’s lying down and breathless, again, as Ghost attacks him with excited licks on his face. When he looks up, Davos is there and staring at him in unabashed fear, awe, hope. 

“What happened?” Jon croaks.

“You… you died,” Davos says, inching closer slowly, warily, as if stalking a wild animal. He offers Jon a glass of water, and dignity in the form of clothes. “Mutiny.”

Jon nods blankly, gulping every drop of water with greed. He pulls on a shirt, and breeches, his movement mechanical. “I don’t understand. I know I died. I felt it. How is it that I am here?”

“The Red Priestess… she brought you back.”

He brings a hand to scratch the back of Ghost’s ears. He stares at his hand, watch it grip and feel the softness of his direwolf’s white fur. Dead men can’t move their hands. Dead men can’t pet their wolves. 

He doesn’t stop for an hour. 

  
  


**Day 2: Hour 9**

He walks, his back straight, a hand on the pommel of Longclaw. Ghost stalks alongside him, his stance intimidating and Jon is grateful. He cannot fully trust anyone but Ghost. The crowd silently breaks a pathway for him, and they all stare at him the same way that Davos did. 

The traitors stand on the gallows, some are ashamed, some are angry, but they all look the same to him. There are last words exchanged, and he wills his face to remain impassive.  _ Tell my mother I died fighting the wildlings.  _ Jon couldn’t really give a shit enough to send a raven to the mother, but he inclines his head anyway. The floorboards cave in beneath them and as they all sway and wiggle desperately like worms, a glint of satisfaction bubbles in his stomach. Thorne is the last one to twitch. 

Jon turns to the rest of the black brothers. “Hang the bodies beyond the wall. Wait until they turn into wights, and then suspend them in a crater.” Several nods their heads. “Edd is Lord Commander now. My watch has ended,” he says, and his voice is hard and unfamiliar, but it is his, nonetheless.

When Lady Melisandre asks him what he saw when he died, he says,  _ nothing _ . 

  
  


**Day 4: Hour 8**

Tormund crushes him into a hug and then leans in to examine the color of his eyes. “Huh. Not blue?”

“Still grey.” 

“Thought so. You scared me back there a little, crow!” Tormund hits his back perhaps a bit too hard, and he cringes, his body still sore, but Jon welcomes it. 

  
  


**Day 4: Hour 12**

He tells Edd that he’s going south. He is packed up and ready to leave, not wanting to stay a second further in the Wall, not after what happened — fuck the white walkers, fuck the Night’s Watch. Once, he might have dreamed of taking Winterfell back from the hands of Boltons. Restore it to the Stark name, and his banner could be a white wolf with red eyes against a field of grey. But he doesn’t have an army, nor any concrete plans, but he does have Ghost, Longclaw, and Tormund with a few other free folk, and that is enough. Probably.

Edd tries to stop him, but he’s not hearing any of it. Edd reminds him of the threat of the undead, and Jon wants to laugh. There’s deep-seated anger inside of him, rage and fury that stews and coils and  _ burns _ and if he spends any more time here than he has to, he might snap.

The blare of a horn signals an arrival. There’s a yell of  _ Open the gates!  _ A heavy groan of metal against the concrete as the entrance gives way, and the first thing he sees is red hair and blue eyes — a face he never thought he’d see again, caked in dirt and exhaustion — and he holds his breath as his whole body stills. He walks down the stairs and each step clears the distance between them. One second passes, and then two. They meet each other halfway — he lets out an  _ oomph _ and embraces her just as tightly as she does. He whispers,  _ you’ve grown taller,  _ and she only grips him tighter, like he could disappear at any moment and there’s a lump in his throat as he slowly pats her back. 

A lightness envelops and calms the restlessness inside of him and it feels ultimately like relief, like he finally has a piece of home after years of self-imposed exile and longing and longing and  _ longing _ for Winterfell. He doesn’t want to let go of it. 

  
  


**Day 4: Hour 17**

Sansa Stark is not the same girl he once knew. There is sorrow in the way that her damp red hair falls as she sips on a bad soup that is the best that Castle Black could offer, and her eyes are tired but they are as blue as they had ever been, and this time it is unwavering with a quiet resolve that he could not stop himself from staring. 

“Where will you go?” she asks, her voice small, and he is taken aback at the insecure exclusion of herself as if she is only here as a passing visitor. 

“Where will we go,” he says. Firmly. “If I don’t watch over you, father’s ghost will come back and murder me.”

The trepidation on her face eases away as the corner of her lips tugs upwards.  _ Good.  _

“There’s only one place we can go,” she pauses, and Jon waits, looking at her expectantly. “Home.”

“Or we could go somewhere warm, like Essos. I heard that in the east, every day is hotter than our summer.”

“Jon, I’m being serious.”

He scoffs. “What, should we tell the Boltons to just pack up and leave, then?” 

She stiffens, hands tightening around her cup. “How many wildlings did you save?”

“Not many,” he deadpans. “They don’t serve me, Sansa.”

“They owe you their lives!” 

“It doesn’t work like that. And they are the free folk, not wildlings.” He doesn’t say that he has thought about it, because he knows that the numbers aren’t enough, and the free folk are barely surviving as it is. 

“Do you think that the Boltons would let them run free in the north? Ramsay takes pleasure in hunting and killing. To him, the free folk would be a fun treat, a game. They would never be safe as long as he holds Winterfell. We would never be safe.”

Jon suppresses a sigh. “Sansa—”

“Winterfell is our  _ home.  _ It belongs to us. To Arya, and Bran, and Rickon, wherever they are, it belongs to our  _ family.  _ We have to fight for it.” 

“I’m tired of fighting. It’s all I’ve ever done, ever since I left Winterfell.”

“You’re not the only person who’s been fighting for years! What did you think happened to me, living as a hostage in King’s Landing? And then to the Boltons? I’m tired, too, Jon. But we are the last of the Starks. We can’t just sit here. Or flee to Essos. Winterfell is our home,” she repeats, almost desperately, and her voice cracks at the end. 

He quiets.

  
  


**Day 6: Hour 10**

He escorts Sansa to the elevator and up to the top of the wall, a bit like a tour guide. It is a shoddy wooden contraption that groans and whines at every increase of altitude, and he feels oddly conscious about it. They don’t speak of their argument, and she thanks him when he opens the door and waits for her to step out first. She grasps his arm as they walk atop of slippery ice, her steps unsure and nervous. “Careful,” he mutters. 

“I’m trying,” she snaps back. He rolls his eyes but he doesn’t let go of his hold on her. 

“Well. Here we are.” 

“It’s…” she pauses as she surveys the vast white lands. “It’s impressive.” 

“It is,” he says. “Tyrion stood here and relieved himself. Said something about pissing off the edge of the world.” It was probably not a good conversational topic in the presence of a lady, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“That sounds like him.”

“Did you get to know him?” 

“They married me to him, actually,” she replies, her tone bland. 

He raises his eyebrows. “You have a lot of stories to tell me, so it seems.”

“You, too.” 

“That’s fine. We have time.” 

“What’s it like, beyond the wall?” she asks, and he is reminded of the time when all he knew that existed beyond it were the fables of grumkins and snarks.

“Empty. Freezing. Beautiful, though.” They fall into silence, breathing in the cold. The air is somehow purer at the top of the world. Cleaner. The wind howls mournfully, foreboding and devastating. The view  _ is  _ impressive, and he could see the red leaves of weirwoods, glinting its sharp contrast against the snow. It looks like blood seeping out of the white ground. 

His gaze falls down to the hanged mutineers. Wights, now. They wiggle from the nooses around their necks. 

“Let’s go down. It’s too cold up here, and I have something to show you.”

  
  


**Day 6: Hour 11**

Sansa’s face is white as she stares in aghast at the shrieking, rotting body of Thorne. She steps back and Jon steadies her. “He used to be a commander of the City Watch in King’s Landing. During the rebellion. Used to boast about it all the time, too. Hated me on sight.” 

She inhales sharply. “And now, he’s, what? What is he?”

“A wight. He’s undead. That’s why I fought to let the free folk through. Once you die beyond the wall, you have to be burned or you’ll become one of them,” he says.

“I thought those were just stories made up by Old Nan to frighten us into behaving.”

He feels a twinge of sentiment at the mention of the frail old woman. She was kind to him, when no one else was. Sang to him a few times, didn’t treat him differently than she did the rest of his siblings. 

“Most horror stories are real.”

  
  


**Day 6: Hour 13**

“Your sister is very pretty,” Tormund remarks, sharpening his ax. “Kissed by fire, just like me.”

Jon eyes him suspiciously. “I know. She is.”

“But her companion… I’ve never seen a taller woman! Brienne, you said her name was? Ah! Brienne the Beauty. We’d make beautiful babies, don’t you think?”

Jon chuckles. “Right. Good luck with that.”

  
  


**Day 7: Hour 20**

“Where did you go?” he asks. Sansa looks up from a book salvaged from the library. 

“Brienne was with me. We looked around the nearby towns,” she answers in a measured tone and goes back to reading. 

“There are only brothels and inns around here.” 

She reddens at the mention of a brothel, because she’s a prim, proper lady, and he is slightly amused at that. He waits for her to continue, but she doesn’t. 

“You just looked around… then? That’s it?”

“That’s it,” she says. He hums, not believing a word. 

“What happened to Uncle Benjen?” she hastily changes the subject. 

“He went on a mission beyond the wall,” he replies, eyes trained on her tense grip of the book. “And never came back.”

Silence. 

“He was my favorite uncle.” 

“Mine as well.”

Sansa hasn’t met her mother’s brother, nor the legendary Blackfish, and he doesn’t have any other uncle that he knows of (being the bastard that he is), but Uncle Benjen was still the best, and they both agree on that. 

**Day 8: Hour 7**

Sansa pretends to eat her food, fidgeting with her fork. He almost says something but they aren’t alone, and so he stops himself. He eagerly munches on his own food instead, used to the derelict taste. 

“A letter to the Lord Commander.”

“I’m not Lord Commander anymore,” Jon says stubbornly. Edd sighs like he’s tired of Jon’s dramatics, but he accepts the letter and hands it to Jon, anyway. 

“ _ To the traitor and bastard Jon Snow. You allowed thousands of wildlings past the Wall. You have betrayed your own kind. You have betrayed the North. Winterfell is mine, bastard. Come and see. Your brother Rickon is in my dungeon. His direwolf’s skin is on my floor. Come and see. I want my bride back. Send her to me, bastard, and I will not trouble you or your wildling lovers. Keep her from me and I will ride north and slaughter every wildling man, woman, and babe under your protection, you will watch as I skin them living. You— ”  _ Jon stiffens, and something twists at his gut, stronger than hate, darker than malice. “Go on,” Sansa says. 

“It’s just more of the same.” 

She snatches the letter from him and his skin crawls at the sound of her reading the rest of it out loud. Blood rushes up to his ears as he tightens his grip on the poorly made steel of his fork, wishing he could stick it to the bastard’s eyes. More than anything else, he wants Ramsay Bolton to suffer. Sansa reaches out and clasps his hand into hers, and he is startled by the feel of her soft skin and the intensity of her stare that he doesn’t argue, not this time, when she says that they have to take back Winterfell. He only nods as if in a daze, his rage slowly dwindling down. 

She has a way of looking at people and entrancing them into an illusion that they are the only ones around. He wonders, briefly, if she’s aware of her effect on people. Probably not. 

  
  


**Day 8: Hour 19**

_ Come and see. Come and see.  _ He paces on his chamber, almost burning holes on the floor. Ramsay has five thousand men, and the number of Wildlings who could fight could only amount to a mere two thousand — if they are being generous. Sansa watches him coolly, sipping her tea from the fireplace. 

“Stop it, you’re making me dizzy.” 

He comes to an abrupt stop and turns his attention towards her. The fire reflects on her hair, and it shines like copper. She looks somehow unreachable in that light; unreal and intangible. She quirks an eyebrow and then pats Ghost lying by her feet, smoothing her hand down his white fur. He is reminded of when they were younger, of her daintily tying Lady’s furs with pink silk ribbons. Sweet, docile Lady, he wonders what happened to her but he knows it must not have been good. 

“Do you still sing?” he blurts. 

“What?” she asks, slightly amused. 

“You know,” he gestures to Ghost, feeling a bit stupid. “You used to sing to Lady.”

Something washes over her face, but it’s gone after a moment and she lowers her lashes and continues on petting Ghost. It’s a sight to see; most people he has grown to know are mostly wary, if not afraid, of the giant direwolf. But Ghost is lying on the floor contentedly, almost like a small puppy. She is a Stark, after all. More than he is. 

“Do you want me to sing?” 

“I — no. I don’t know. If you want to.”

“There’s not much to sing about, not since we left Winterfell.” 

She stares blankly at the fireplace, lightly thumbing her cup. Poor children of Winterfell, scattered so far apart, left to fend for themselves, forced to grow up too young, too alone — robbed of their innocence to lead kingdoms, to deal with the relentless selfish agenda of others, to be beaten up with their chin down. Sansa was right, they never should have left Winterfell. 

  
  


**Day 8: Hour 21**

That night, she goes back to his chambers and climbs on his bed. “Nightmares,” she says. And they are children once more, with her slipping in between him and Robb for comfort. Only now Robb is gone, and silence falls between them and she tugs his hand and he laces their fingers together.

“What happened to your hand?” She whispers. 

“I burnt it, trying to protect the previous lord commander from a wight. It was the first time I’ve ever seen one. Thrust my hand into the fireplace to reach for a lump of coal. We brought the corpse of a brother back to Castle Black, for our maester to study. Didn’t expect it to start trying to kill people — who would have? He, Lord Mormont, that is, made me his steward afterward.”

She nods.

“What happened to Lady?” he asks, his probing tone as gentle as he could.

“Cersei.” The name rolls off her tongue languidly, smoothly, and to anyone else, her resentment might have been undetectable.

He nods. 

“Rickon—” she begins.

“We’ll get him back,” he interrupts. “We’ll get him back.” He says it again. Maybe if he says it enough times, it would work. 

They don’t speak another word. 

**Day 10: Hour 7**

On the tenth day that he wakes up from the dead, they move to leave Castle Black at first light. The free folk busies themselves with preparing the wagons for tents and food, and he sees Tormund trying to ease up to Brienne, who resolutely looks the other way. As the sun rose that day, it brought something colder, and it felt like a promise of a leering threat, daunting and inevitable. He ignores it and fastens the last strap of the saddle. 

Sansa walks towards him, her expression cordial. 

“New dress,” he says. 

“I made it myself, do you like it?” She looks proud of it, and it is refreshing, to see her beam like this. Her mother and her septa always spoke highly of Sansa’s needlework, and they weren’t wrong. His eyes zero in on the embroidered snarling white wolf against the dark blue of her dress, but then he realizes that he’s staring at her chest and he flusters. 

“That is— I like the wolf bit.” His ears feel hot.

“Good,” she smiles. “Because I made this,” she hands him a heavy cloak, “— for you.” At the leather strap is an embossed stark sigil.  _ Oh. _ And he is— he is lost for words. No one’s ever done anything like this for him. “I made it just like the one father used to wear. Or as near as I could remember.”

“Thank you, Sansa.”

“Your welcome,” she shoots him another smile, looking pleased with herself, and leaves.

He stares after her, and then at the cloak,  _ his  _ cloak, wondering how long it must have taken her to finish this. The corners of his lips quirk up for a moment, and he feels — delighted. No one’s ever given him a present as precious as this. 

He says his goodbyes to Ed, and he hears the faint screeching of the wights as they are loaded to one of the carts, the black brother carrying it looks like he might throw up at any moment. It’s time to leave.

Ghost bounces ahead, fast and agile.

It is snowing.

**Author's Note:**

> hey :) please tell me what you think. should i add in more chapters?


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